Careers for Statisticians

If you have quantitative inclinations and your favorite question is "why," you just might be a statistician. Statisticians are always in demand, but to get the a jump start on your career, it helps to plan ahead! Majoring in statistics is a great choice as you can always play in anyone's backyard.

Potential Job Opportunities

Below is a listing of industries (and representative companies) that typically hire statisticians:

  • Health & Medicine: National Institutes of Health, Eli Lilly & Company, Amgen, Merck, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, The Mayo Clinic
  • Consulting: McKinsey, Mercer, Deloitte, BCG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, Bain, Accenture
  • Finance: Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, American Express, Deutsche Bank, AIG, Barclays Capital, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan
  • Actuarial: CIGNA, Towers Watson, Liberty Mutual
  • High Tech: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, bit.ly
  • Software: Microsoft, SAS, SPSS
  • Marketing: [x+1]
  • Think Tank: RAND, RTI, Battelle
  • Sports: ESPN, Stats LLC
  • Journalism: NYTimes, Washington Post, USA Today
  • Polling organizations: Gallup, Pew Research, AP-NORC
  • International organizations: United Nations, World Bank
  • Government agencies: US Census Bureau, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Bureau of Labor Statistics, NSA
  • Advocacy/NGO: Data Without Borders, MobileActive 

More Careers in Statistics

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See This is Statistics for a list and descriptions of 20 jobs in statistics.

For students interested in Actuarial Science, courses are offered at Duke across three departments: Statistical Science, Mathematics and Economics.